


Hooked on a Feeling

by ginger_mosaic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chuck is God, Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Post-Season/Series 10, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Weddings, back from the dead, this is really bad and i'm not proud of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: He can’t put it into words, this flutter in his chest, this weightlessness in his gut, the constant floating feeling of his brain in his skull that is almost like being high and is making him want to laugh and cry all at once. He feels like he’s falling apart and being put back together. He feels too warm and—and—“Happy,” says Cas.





	Hooked on a Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> So I’m actually super ashamed by how fluffy and sappy and gross this is, but I wrote it. I wrote this goddamn sappy, self-indulgent, cliché fanfic, and I might as well share it. As though the Supernatural fandom needs another Destiel wedding fic. I’m so, so terribly sorry. Like, for everything.
> 
> I wrote this before the Chuck reveal and before Mary came back, but I got stuck on a scene and couldn’t decide on a Destiel song (which I gave up on, oh well). Now that I’ve figured that scene out… Here you go, I guess.

 

Sam finds him, and really, it couldn’t have been _that_ hard, but when Dean looks up, Sam looks relieved, and then he smiles patiently.

“Not getting cold feet, are you?” asks Sam, closing the door to the back room of the church. Why they’re doing this in a church in the first place is beyond Dean, but whatever. He’d caved when Mom looked at him so hopefully, and it was weird enough to have her looking at him at _all_ , so he’d choked and agreed.

“Screw you, Sam,” he says, letting his head fall back into his hands. He would say more, but his stomach is doing somersaults, and he’s just trying to focus on making it stop. He hasn’t felt like this since the last time he was coerced into getting on a plane, and _oh God, stop thinking about planes._

Sam just laughs at him, the bastard, and comes to sit next to him on the moth-eaten couch that the church probably picked up off the curb twenty years ago. They’re surrounded by craft supplies and paper plates and carts of fold-up chairs and whatever else the youth group shoved into the back room to make room for this stupid goddamn wedding. They should have just eloped. They were in Vegas only a month ago—why hadn’t they just done it then?

“You gonna hide in here all day, or what?” asks Sam.

“I’m not _hiding_ ,” snarls Dean. “There are a lot of people out there.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, except this may be the smallest wedding I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it’s like the wedding in Kill Bill. There are, what, ten people out there?”

He sure as hell hopes it’s _not_ like Kill Bill. Maybe he should have let Crowley come after all. It’s too late for that though; they’ve got devil’s traps and wards all over the church and in a half-mile perimeter.

“Well, Benny couldn’t make it, so,” mutters Dean.

Sam grimaces regretfully, and Dean feels bad for lashing out and bringing it up on this day of all days. He doesn’t want to fight with Sam. It’s been years, but Dean guesses Sam’s feelings about Benny will always be complicated. Still, Dean wishes he could be here, if only to sit there and reassure Dean in his smooth Cajun accent that he’s _got nuthin’ ta worry ‘bout, brotha._ Then he’d probably slap a hand on Dean’s shoulder, shake him a little, and push him through the door. _Come on, weddin’ bells’re ringin’, Winchester_.

But Sam’s not like Benny. Instead of warmly berating him for whatever it is he’s doing—and it’s _not_ cold feet, it’s just not—Sam just smiles indulgently, and he probably thinks it’s encouraging somehow.

“If you don’t get out there soon, we’re all gonna think you’ve ditched,” says Sam. Yeah, real motivational, Sam. Gold fucking star.

“I’m not gonna,” says Dean, shooting him a glare. “Made it this far, didn’t I?”

Sam shrugs, and then he looks thoughtful. “Funny thing is,” he says, “I think Cas is the least anxious out of all of us.”

“Well, it’s Cas,” says Dean. “What do you expect? He probably doesn’t even get how big this is.”

Sam smiles at him again, and Dean sneers at him. God, he wishes Sam would stop looking so fucking proud of him. It’s making him sick.

There’s a knock at the door, and Sam stands up, but before he can move, it opens and Dean sees their parents standing in the hall.

“Did you find him, Sam?” asks Mary, and her eyes slide from Sam to where Dean is sitting on the couch. She smiles and it’s like sunshine, and Dean wants to cry. God, every time she smiles at him, he wants to cry.

“Dean, honey, what are you doing?” she asks, crossing the room to him. He pushes himself to his feet, feeling like a kid again. It’s been two weeks since Mom and Dad and Bobby inexplicably came back to life, and it’s been _weird_ , but also a welcome relief because it meant planning the wedding was easy (even if it also is the reason a wedding is happening at all). Book a small church in Lebanon, buy some tuxes, order some food and a small cake—easy. It’s a small ceremony, and last minute at that, and it’s all fine because Dean let everyone else choose everything because only one choice he could make about today matters anyway.

But it’s _weird_ , because Mom doesn’t know how to treat him like he’s not four and she doesn’t really know Sam. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Her smile breaks through like sunshine through cloudy skies, and she keeps adjusting their collars and tucking Sam’s ridiculous hair behind his ears and watching Dean clean his guns and knives with a proud, watery smile. She’s not talking to John because she’s angry with him for raising their kids _to be hunters, goddamnit, John_ , but that doesn’t seem to matter either, because she’s proud of them regardless.

So what _is_ he doing? He can’t let her down, not after she spent hours poring over flower magazines with Cas (they’d decided on goldenrods and asters and various other bee-friendly flowers, but fuck if Dean knows what they are).

“Nothing,” he says, narrowly avoiding shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking on his heels. “Just needed… air.”

Mary looks around the room skeptically and then reaches for his bow tie, which is still looped limply around his neck.

“I’ll go call off the search party,” says Sam. He nods at their father as he passes through the door. John nods back and, with a glance at Dean, closes the door after Sam.

“Are you ready?” asks Mary, tipping Dean’s chin up with a finger and lifting his collar to position the tie.

For a moment, he can’t speak. Her warm, familiar scent fills his nose, clouding his whole head, and even though she has to reach up to help him with his bow tie—they should have just worn their suits, _why_ did they feel the need to get tuxes anyway?—he feels all of three feet tall.

They’d just _appeared_ , out of nowhere, at the door of the bunker, confused as all fuck, and Dean had no idea what this feeling was. The night before, he and Cas had agreed to tie the knot, but it was more like they were just going to—to commit to whatever this was.

It was after, and Dean was still breathing heavily, and he felt buoyant and loose enough that when he opened his mouth, it just slipped out:

“This is it. I never want anything else ever again.”

Cas had lifted his head and squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

Dean swallowed and felt the flush warming his face. He hadn’t meant to say it, to put it out there so suddenly. He wanted to take it back, but he couldn’t and the longer he thought about it, he actually _didn’t_ want to, so instead he said, “This is it. You… You’re it. For me.”

And: “I don’t want anybody else for the rest of my life.”

Cas had smiled, all teeth and gums and shining eyes. “Me too,” he said. He slipped his hand up Dean’s chest and rested his palm over his heart. “I would gladly spend eternity with you.”

Then, suddenly, he was holding his pinky up in Dean’s face.

“What are you doing?” asked Dean.

“It’s a promise,” said Cas, and Dean breathed out a short laugh. Charlie had told him about pinky promises, and he had been so amused that he was making them all over the place. And now here he was, offering his pinky to Dean like it was something sacred. “It’s a promise that you’re ‘it’ for me, too.”

And despite the fingerquotes (or who was he kidding, maybe because of them), Dean felt a warm wave of affection for him. He wanted to call him a sap and tackle him and maybe try for a second round, but after a moment of hesitation, he settled for hooking his pinky finger around Castiel’s.

Then Cas moved over him and took Dean’s face in both his hands, smiling down at him. “I will follow you anywhere, Dean,” he said against Dean’s mouth, and then he kissed him.

They didn’t even talk about a ceremony. They hadn’t said anything about _marriage_ , but then Dean’s parents appeared, and Cas told them he and Dean were committing to each other (after a lot of other awkward conversations), and it had all snow-balled from there.

Bobby had even said, “It’s about damn time,” whatever the fuck _that_ meant.

Now, minutes away from their ceremonial commitment, Dean swallows and croaks, “Yeah.”

Mary looks up at him with a sly smile. He never could lie to her well.

“I’m so proud of you, Dean,” she says, looping the tie around. He wouldn’t have been able to do this himself, and Charlie totally abandoned him to it. “My boys grew up to be two wonderful men. When we get back to heaven, I’m going to brag for the rest of eternity.”

He swallows the reminder that this is a temporary return; they just knew it was somehow. “I can’t explain it,” Mary had said, “but I know it’s only for a little while. So let’s make the most of it.”

“Yeah, if you could put in a good word for us, that’d be helpful,” he manages to joke.

She gives him an unamused look. “Honey, you’re marrying an _actual_ angel. I think you’ve got an in.”

He’s not about to ruin their perfectly nice reunion with the revelation that only a year ago he was a demon, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“I like him,” she adds. “Castiel. He’s… He’s very…”

“Weird,” Dean supplies. “Really, really weird.”

She gives him another look, but the corners of her lips twitch. “Sweet,” she says. “He’s sweet. And I can tell he loves you a lot.”

It’s absolutely, _entirely_ her fault that he’s feeling heat rise in his cheeks; he inherited his tendency to blush easily from her, he just knows it. Sam never blushes, and there was always more of Dad in him.

“Yeah, well,” he says, trying to remain composed, “what’s not to love?”

Mary laughs, and Dean melts. He can still make her laugh. After all these years and all the shit he’s done, he can still make Mom laugh. This whole week has been too good to be true. When will his real life crash down around him again?

“There,” says Mary, adjusting his bow tie and then folding his collar down neatly. She smooths out the tux jacket over his shoulders and stands back to inspect him. When she meets his eyes, she smiles. “You’re perfect,” she says. She reaches for him again, and he leans down obediently so she can kiss his forehead, holding his face in her soft, warm hands.

“Thanks, Mom,” he says quietly, resting his hands lightly on her slim wrists. He doesn’t want to let go, but eventually the moment ends, and she steps back and he does.

“I’ll go find Castiel,” she says, still smiling brightly. Dean nods, and when she turns around, John straightens slightly. When she gets to the door, she puts a hand on his arm and smiles gently at him, and John’s tense expression softens. Mary looks back at Dean once more, eyes shining, and then she leaves and the door closes behind her.

For a long time, John just stands next to the door, arms crossed, watching Dean with that hard, thinking look that means Dean is about to get the _I’m Disappointed In You_ speech of a lifetime. He’s been waiting for it, but John has been surprisingly reticent about his sons’ life choices over the last few years.

Then:

“I don’t think she was even half this happy at our wedding.”

Dean blinks, and his dad smiles softly, one corner of his mouth quirked up. He looks small, somehow, but also just as imposing as he’s always been. Dean can’t seem to reconcile these feelings. Relief and fear; regret and hope. He’ll burst. He can’t do this.

“She doesn’t hate you, Dad,” he says. “She still loves you.”

John huffs and looks down. When he looks back up at Dean, he smirks. “It’s not your job to fix our marriage, son.” He sighs. “She’ll get over it. I know she just needs time. Death gives you a lot of perspective.”

Dean nods. God knows _he’s_ certainly learned things from dying so many times.

“I know I haven’t…” John begins, and then he stops and scrubs a hand through his hair. In this one way, Dean knows they are alike; neither of them are very good with words and feelings. That is definitely Mom and Sam’s domain.

“Dad, you don’t have to—” Dean starts, shifting his weight, but John holds up a hand and he stops.

“I just…” John rubs at his eyes and finally meets Dean’s eyes again. “I want you to know that, no matter what, I’m proud of you. _Damn_ proud of you. I know I was never very supportive of you—I let you down more times than I can count, I know that—but—” He sighs again, and Dean feels something welling up in his chest, and his heart is pounding and it’s hard to breathe. “You’re a good kid, Dean. Always have been. And you’re a damn good man.”

His dad swims in his vision, and Dean blinks several times until he can see clearly, and he takes a deep breath.

“Thanks, Dad,” he croaks.

John nods and finally looks away, which gives Dean the chance to learn how to breathe again. What the hell is even going on? What is this feeling?

Suddenly, John pushes off the wall near the door and reaches into his jacket pocket. “Here,” he says, producing what is unmistakably a silver flask. He walks over to hand it to Dean, shaking it a little and smirking. “Thought you might need it.”

Dean laughs and takes it. “Like a fish needs water,” he agrees, twisting the cap off and taking a swig. The whiskey burns as it goes down, warming him, and he hands the flask back to his dad.

“Nothing like a little Dutch courage to carry you through,” says John, and Dean chuckles as his father takes a drink. He closes it and passes it back to Dean. “I’ll let you hang onto this.”

Dean nods and slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thanks, Dad,” he says again.

John claps him on the shoulder, smiling in a way that is entirely unfamiliar to Dean, and for a moment he wonders if maybe all their tests on Dad, Mom, and Bobby failed, but he knows deep down in his bones that this is really his father, and _shit_ , what is this feeling?

“All right, pull it together and meet us out there, soldier,” says John, letting him go and starting to the door.

“Yes, sir,” says Dean, and John shoots him a smirk over his shoulder and opens the door, revealing Cas. Dean blinks in surprise, and Cas turns his head at the door opening. It looks like he’s been standing there a while, probably staring off into space, thinking of bees or something. Cas’s eyes flick around the room, alighting on Dean before stopping on John and narrowing.

“Hello, John,” he says.

John dips his head. “Castiel.” He hesitates for a moment, and then he reaches out and claps a hand on Cas’s shoulder. Cas looks down at his hand in mild surprise, and John smiles.

“You take good care of my boy, you hear?” says John, and Dean feels heat rise in his face again.

“Dad,” he complains.

“Of course,” says Cas seriously. Dean groans.

John chuckles and moves aside to let Cas into the room and then steps out. “I’ll leave you boys to it,” he says, grinning, and he shuts the door on Dean’s glare. Cas watches the door, head tilted curiously for a moment, and then turns to Dean.

“Was that part of the human custom of giving your child away to be married?” he asks.

Dean groans again and falls back into the couch. “Not a woman, Cas,” he mutters, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Cas says nothing for a while, and when Dean finally looks up again, Cas is watching him, a soft smile on his face. “What?”

Cas shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Dean frowns and breaks eye contact and notices that Cas’s bow is all tied, too. “You, uh, do that yourself?” He gestures to it and realizes it was too vague, so he redirects his hand to his own collar.

Cas looks down at his bowtie and touches it lightly. “Your mother found me and told me my own attempt was inadequate. It’s fine now.”

Dean chuckles, dropping his head tiredly, and Cas finally comes to sit next to him on the couch, jostling him a little. The movement makes the flask in his pocket bump against his chest, and he reaches into his jacket to take it out again.

“Want some?” he asks, shaking it the same way his dad did.

Cas squints at the flask, and then smiles and nods. Dean hands it over, and when Cas tips his head back to take a swig, the silver catches the light and recognition hits Dean like a punch to the gut. It’s Bobby’s old flask. Cas is drinking out of Bobby’s flask, which John gave to Dean and which he probably got from Bobby with clear instructions. Goddamn. They’re all conspiring to give him a goddamn mental breakdown, he’s sure of it.

Cas hands the flask back, and Dean turns it in his hands. They had burned it a long time ago, and Dean had regretted how necessary it was at the time. It was the last thing they had of Bobby’s; Garth had taken his hat, and they’d only had the flask until they had to salt-and-burn it. Now it’s back and providing that old comfort it always had.

Cas is silent for a long time in the way that always leads up to a question Dean can’t answer, and it strikes him that it probably does look like he’s hiding and getting cold feet (even though Cas probably doesn’t even know what that means, would probably take it literally and offer to warm Dean’s feet up with a foot rub, and hey, actually…), but he’s not—he’s _not_ —he just—

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, tucking the flask away again. “I just… Everything is so weird, man. My _parents_ are here. I’m about to marry my best friend. I don’t… I feel…” But he can’t put it into words, this flutter in his chest, this weightlessness in his gut, the constant floating feeling of his brain in his skull that is almost like being high and is making him want to laugh and cry all at once. He feels like he’s falling apart and being put back together. He feels too warm and—and—

“Happy,” says Cas, and Dean’s head snaps up to meet his eyes, and he’s smiling. “I understand if you don’t recognize it. Your life has not been easy, Dean Winchester. But I believe this feeling is what they call ‘happiness.’” He frowns suddenly. “That is, if what you’re feeling is anything like how I feel.”

Dean stares at him, and he looks so serious. When he meets Dean’s eyes again, tilting his head inquisitively and with a little concern, Dean has to laugh.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean says, grinning. “I mean, yes. I am. I just…”

But words were never his strong suit, and Cas knows that and just smiles back and leans in. Dean meets him halfway, because it’s all he can do, and Cas reaches up and rests his hand on Dean’s jaw and pulls him closer. He still can’t believe he has this. But until it falls apart, he’ll enjoy it.

“Are you sure—” he begins when Cas moves to the corner of his mouth to let him breathe, but then Cas cuts him off with another kiss.

“I tire of this conversation,” says Cas roughly against Dean’s mouth. “I won’t have it anymore. If you’re nervous…”

“’M not nervous,” Dean lies in a murmur, and Cas huffs through his nose.

“Perhaps,” he says, punctuating his words with drawn-out kisses that get deeper and rougher and hungrier as he speaks, “to spend our... nervous energy, we should—”

“Shut up,” says Dean.

“—engage in pre-ceremony—”

Maybe don’t shut up. “Fuck yes,” Dean says, and he grabs Cas by his tux jacket and uses his grip to pivot and throw a leg over Cas to straddle his thighs. He runs his hands through Cas’s hair and yanks on it to pull his head back. Cas moans into his mouth, and Dean grins. Happiness, huh? He could get used to this.

Because this is all he wants. Just Cas, and fuck everything else. The ceremony, the cake, the flowers—that’s for everyone else. The only thing that matters is that after it’s all over, he and Cas will be bound together in pretty much every way possible, and that’s pretty fucking awesome. That an angel Fell and fell for him and became his best friend and agreed to stay with him forever—that’s just fucking awesome.

Cas grips his shoulder and Dean thinks, _Profound bond, no shit_ , and he slips his hand between them and then there’s a knock on the door.

Dean freezes and pulls away, and Sam calls through the door.

“Hey, everyone’s ready. You ever coming out?” Sam pauses and then snickers, and Dean thinks, _Fuck you, Sam_.

“Your brother has incredibly bad timing,” Cas murmurs into Dean’s collar, and Dean sits back with a sigh.

“He’s been cockblocking me his whole life,” he says. “Dunno why I thought that would stop on my fucking wedding day.”

“Dean?”

“Be there in a minute!” Dean shouts over his shoulder. Cas grins up at him, his hair mussed and sticking up in the back. Dean runs his fingers through it again, trying to smooth it back down into place, but Cas grips his hips in a distracting way so eventually Dean gives up. He always looks like he’s got sex hair anyway.

Dean climbs off him and straightens his tux, and Cas stands up to do the same, even reaching out to adjust Dean’s bow tie. Dean knows they’re just stalling now, and the longer they take, the more suspicious it will look, so he forces himself to turn away and get the door, rubbing a hand over his mouth self-consciously.

Sam smirks at him when he opens the door, but when his gaze slides to Cas behind him, his eyes widen in surprise.

“Cas!” he says. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony?”

Dean scowls at him. “Man, shut the hell up.”

Sam laughs, and when Cas says, “It is?” he laughs harder. Dean punches his shoulder, but he doesn’t even flinch, the goddamn moose.

“Come on,” says Sam, waving them down the hall. “Everyone’s waiting.”

He leads the way to the outer hall, where Dad, Mom, and Bobby are waiting. Mary’s eyes light up when she sees them, and when they reach the small crowd, she immediately begins to fuss over Cas.

“Castiel, isn’t there anything we can do about your hair?” she says, trying to smooth down a spot Dean missed behind his ear. Cas submits to the grooming serenely, and Sam coughs. Dean shoots him a glare and rolls his eyes when Sam fails—barely tries, really—to hide a grin. This is a mistake, because his eyes stop on his dad, who raises an eyebrow, and Dean fights a losing battle with a blush and looks away, too aware of how swollen his mouth feels.

“Did you decide who’s walking down first?” asks Sam. “I think it should be Cas.”

“What? Why?” Dean asks, startled.

Sam flips his mop of hair impatiently. “So he doesn’t end up walking alone, Dean,” he says, and clearly there’s an _obviously_ attached to that that Dean doesn’t understand.

“I thought Bobby was walking him,” says Dean, bewildered, and also a little dismayed. God, walking second… That _is_ the bride’s walk, and yeah, okay, Cas isn’t a woman either, but—

“Bobby’s performing the ceremony,” says Sam. “It’d make more sense for him to get up there first.”

Dean doesn’t have a good argument, but he tries anyway. “But—”

“We could settle it with Rock, Paper, Scissors,” Cas suggests, and they all turn to him.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors?” says Dean dubiously.

Cas nods, looking around at all of them. “You and Sam often use it to settle disputes,” he says, and he lifts his hands to rest his right fist on his palm. “Everyone is waiting. It’s a quick way to decide.”

Dean glances around, but no one seems to have objections, so he shrugs. “All right, let’s do it.” He shakes out his hands and puts his game face on and ignores Sam’s sigh.

They shoot on three, and Dean stares at Cas’s rock.

Sam sighs again. “Always with the scissors, Dean.”

“He thinks it’s funny,” says Cas, eyes still on Dean.

“I do not,” he snaps.

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I—Whatever,” he says, shaking himself, and raises his hands again. “Best two of three.”

Cas raises an eyebrow, but when Dean counts it out, he throws paper and Dean cackles triumphantly.

“You didn’t think I’d choose scissors again,” Dean gloats. “Heh, heh, sucker.”

Cas just goes into ready position again dispassionately, but Dean can see him twitching. Cas doesn’t have many tells—a side-effect of being an emotionless winged douchebag for thousands of years, probably—but Dean’s got to know him pretty well, he’d say, and now he’s—

Sam bursts out laughing, and Cas’s hand twitches, hesitating briefly, before closing over Dean’s rock. Dean raises his gaze to Cas’s, and Cas smiles somewhat apologetically, but he’s got that goddamn amused twinkle in his eyes and Dean will never, ever forgive him for this.

Cas must clearly see this in Dean’s expression, because he clears his throat and tries to compose himself before patting Dean’s fist twice. “Meet you at the altar,” he says, absolutely failing at keeping the laugh out of his voice despite his serious face. He walks past Dean, and Bobby and Sam turn to join him at the double doors.

“Yeah, maybe don’t wait up,” Dean growls, scowling at him over his shoulder.

Cas doesn’t even look back, the arrogant bastard, as Sam slips through one of the double doors to start the ceremony. “I’ll always wait for you, Dean,” he says, and Dean frowns at his back, and only moments later, Sam opens the door again and Cas and Bobby disappear into the main hall of the church.

Oh shit. This is happening. This is really happening. He’s about to tie himself to Cas, and it started out as just a way to prove to Cas that he was serious about this, that Falling for Dean’s sake wasn’t a mistake, he couldn’t _stand_ it if Cas sacrificed everything for him and didn’t feel—didn’t _know_ how much Dean appreciates that, how much he needs Cas, how much he wants him to stay. How much _he_ wants to stay.

Even though they didn’t get very far, maybe the pre-ceremony make-out helped anyway, because it’s not until Mom threads her arm through Dean’s and Dad takes his elbow and Sam opens the door again, letting the second verse of an instrumental version of “Thank You” drift through, that Dean’s heart begins to pound in his chest again.

His dad’s voice rumbles low under the sound of the pounding, “Come on, soldier,” and his mom’s sweet, “It’s time,” chimes in his ears, and he feels them lead him forward, his steps stiff and awkward and his heart loud—can they hear it? It’s gotta be echoing in the church—and then he’s through the doors and he sees Cas standing at the top of the aisle and suddenly he could _fly_ to go meet him there.

It takes him a moment to recover from the sight of the awesome that is Cas in a tux standing next to a huge bouquet of bee-friendly flowers to realize that Cas is crying. His eyes are red, and he’s looking at Dean with his face all creased with a weird mix of pain and joy, and Dean quickly glances around to find what hurt him, and then he freezes.

In Bobby’s place at the center of the altar, in an immaculate white suit, wearing a soft smile, is Chuck. Chuck Shurley, inexplicably absent Prophet of the Lord, is _here_ , _alive_ , and Cas is crying—

 _Oh my_ — Dean stops the thought short, because No. Fucking. Way.

The music is still playing, and his parents carry him forward until he reaches the altar, still staring at Chuck. Though if Chuck’s somewhat wary smile is any indication, it’s probably more of a _glare_ , and oh, there’s the anger that goes with it.

“Hello, Dean,” says Chuck, a weak approximation of Cas’s usual greeting.

Dean says nothing until his parents take their seats in the front pews with Bobby, Jody, Donna, Charlie, Claire, Alex, and Garth and Bess. Then, under his breath: “We’re having words after this.”

Chuck actually winces, and Cas hisses, “Dean,” but his voice is thick with suppressed tears, so that just makes up his mind.

“I look forward to it,” Chuck mutters, and he pulls at his white suit jacket. “Just maybe let me change before you break my nose.”

Dean doesn’t figure he owes Chuck any favors, but Cas fidgets across from him, so now is not the time. He looks back at the pews to see how everyone else is reacting to this. Mom and Dad look mildly bemused, and when he meets Bobby’s eyes where he sits on the other side of the aisle, Bobby just shrugs, like, “What are you gonna do?” Everyone else seems blissfully unaware of the implications of this turn of events. Sam, standing a little behind Dean in order to have easier access to the stereo system they’re using and to be at the ready with the rings, also shrugs when Dean glances at him. All right, so they’re going with this.

“If you have no further objections…” says Chuck.

Dean glances at Cas, but he’s gone back to smiling, so he shakes his head. “Go for it.”

Chuck nods and smiles at Cas, and then he looks out to address their small audience.

“In the beginning,” Chuck begins, and _seriously_ , but Cas breathes in sharply and looks close to tears again, so Dean doesn’t interrupt, and Chuck continues, “there was nothing. And then there were a lot of things, and then even more things. And some of those things had free will, and some of them didn’t.” He pauses and looks to Cas. “That was a mistake, made with hubris. All things should have free will. The right, the freedom, the _will_ to choose—that’s beautiful. It’s the ability and perseverance and determination to choose that really makes life worth living. The ability to make mistakes and learn from them and make more mistakes and ultimately decide your own fate—well, that’s what’s worth everything.

“We’ve all come a long way, from the beginning of time when there was nothing, to this point, where we can be here together, after everything, to celebrate this love.” He pauses to smile at Dean and Cas in turn, and then seems to address just them. “You’ve come so far. Thank you for your faith. Not in me,” he adds hastily, when Dean narrows his eyes, “but in each other. I won’t ask anything of you, except that you continue to fight for each other, as you always have.”

Dean looks at Cas, and Cas smiles wryly at him. Yeah, they can do that.

“I’ve been told you’ve written your own vows,” Chuck says, and he looks almost too amused by it. “Who would like to go first?”

Oh shit, right. They hadn’t decided this either. Maybe a last-minute wedding was a little… over hasty.

Cas meets Dean’s eyes, his own wide in dismay. “We didn’t play Rock, Paper, Scissors for this ahead of time,” he says.

Dean bursts out laughing at his serious expression, and Cas frowns. “I’ll give you this one,” he offers. “You’re gonna show me up either way, so…”

Cas’s frown deepens in disapproval for a second, and then he sighs and nods. He glances at Chuck, who nods once, and then he meets Dean’s eyes again and holds out his hands. Dean glances down at them and back up at Cas, who just waits patiently, and then he takes a deep breath and puts his hands in Cas’s. Cas’s shoulders relax from where they’d apparently been tense this whole time, and he smiles softly. With no snickering from anyone, Dean starts to relax, too, but he tenses up again when Cas briefly looks away and back with a serious expression.

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” he says, and Dean feels goosebumps rise on his arms at his gravelly voice, and that serious face, that same face that said those words to him many years ago. He remembers stabbing Cas with Ruby’s knife and feels heat rise to his face. If he knew then what he knows now… he’d probably still have stabbed Cas because, _hello_ , crawled out of his grave, the asshole could have put him up in a nice barn loft _at least_ , what a dick. “Those were my first words to you on Earth,” Cas continues. “My actual first words to you are irrelevant, and you don’t remember them anyway, nor would you understand them, given they were in Enochian.”

Dean _just_ manages not to snort out laughter. Cas is totally rambling, and it’s adorable.

“I actually believed—” Cas pauses, taking a breath and continuing more slowly. “I truly believed that I saved you back then. But upon reflection, I now believe you were the one who saved me.

“I am a being of infinite knowledge and endless memory,” Cas recites, and Dean fights not to roll his eyes. “I was there when the first organisms began their slow crawl onto land, and I watched Rome succumb to its rulers’ greed. I know every language, dead and living, and for millennia I was considered to be among the Host’s greatest strategists—”

“All right, all right, you don’t gotta brag,” Dean says with a grin. “We know, Cas.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “Don’t interrupt me.”

Dean struggles to compose himself and puts on his best _I’m Seriously Paying Attention, I Promise_ face, and the corner of Cas’s mouth twitches, so _ha_ , Dean wins. Someone—Charlie, he thinks—coughs, and Dean manages not to smirk at her and instead squeezes Cas’s hands briefly.

Cas huffs, but after a moment of composing himself, he continues. “Despite that, you find a way, against all odds, to teach me something new every day. You, and all the people I’ve met through you, because of you—Sam, Bobby, Kevin, Charlie, the list goes on—” He stops to take a deep breath and smiles. “You’ve all taught me so much. About friendship and family and freedom—”

 _And another f-word_ , Dean thinks, _but we won’t get into that now_.

“But perhaps most importantly, love,” Cas continues. “As an angel, my Father commanded us to love humanity, and before I met you, I thought I did. Now I realize I didn’t know the meaning of the word. It has only been through experiencing it myself and coming to know you and the people you’ve surrounded yourself with that I think I understand now.” He glances at Chuck, who is wearing a bafflingly proud smile. “I understand now why our Father told us to love you. The worst of you and the best of you.

“But it’s not just humanity that I love,” Cas says firmly, meeting Dean’s eyes again, and Dean holds his breath under that bluest gaze as Cas says, “I love you, Dean Winchester, and I will never, in my entire existence, regret a single moment I spend with you.” And suddenly, through some signal that Dean is not aware of, Sam appears by Cas’s side with their rings on one of the church’s special red pillows, and Cas takes one and lifts Dean’s left hand. “Past, present, and future,” he says, meeting Dean’s gaze, those intense, endless blue eyes fixing on his and holding him there, and then he slips the band onto Dean’s finger slowly, solemnly, and says, “Pinky promise.”

Dean releases his breath in a laugh, and Cas grins, eyes lighting up, solemnity gone. Dean feels like he could move a mountain. Hell, maybe he can. There’s no proof to the contrary. Cas grips his hands, possibly because he can tell that Dean is ready to run out and go test his new mountain moving theory, and it’s not until Cas looks to Chuck that Dean realizes it’s his turn. And the nerves are back, like a lead weight in his stomach. Great.

“Dean,” Chuck prompts, and suddenly Dean is aware of all the eyes on him. Fuck. Okay.

“Yeah,” he says, pulling his hands from Cas’s, and now that he’s paying attention, he realizes that his hands are sweaty. He starts to wipe his palms on his thighs, but he stops himself, because fuck, how will that look, and reaches inside his jacket for the notecards, his fingers brushing the flask he probably should have finished off before coming up here.

He turns the cards in his hands, but when Cas sighs, he looks up with a frown. Cas grimaces at him.

“You wrote it down?” he says, something like fond dismay in his eyes. There are a few muted chuckles from the pews, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Look, not all of us are beings of infinite memory or whatever,” Dean says with a sneer. “ _Some_ of us have to write things down.”

Cas smiles. “Infinite knowledge and endless memory,” he says.

“Whatever. Can I start?”

Cas nods. “By all means.”

Dean scoffs and shakes his head, then looks down at his notes. It took him all week to figure out what to say, and he’s still not sure it’s any good or anything close to what he actually _wants_ to say. But then, it’s Cas; maybe it doesn’t matter. He has the rest of forever to figure out the words.

“So, uh,” he begins to preface, trying to straighten the curled corners of the first notecard against the ones behind it, “you know I’m not really good with words or anything, so—”

“Is this part written down as well?” asks Cas, and Dean glares at him.

“Shut—” But Cas’s eyes are filled with amusement, so he stops. God, what a dick. “Don’t interrupt me,” he echoes mockingly.

Cas breathes out a laugh. “My apologies,” he says, clearly fighting a grin. “Please proceed.”

Dean rolls his eyes and looks to Chuck to make a face like, _Can you believe this guy?_ But Chuck only smirks and waits, so Dean looks down at his notes again and takes a breath.

“Someone pointed out to me earlier this week that when we met that day in that barn, you, uh, kinda blew out all the windows and lights,” he says, and he glances up to smirk at Cas. “Which means there were literally sparks flying.”

Cas laughs, and Dean hears Bobby and Sam both snort, but fuck them, they were the ones who pointed it out.

“I hated you back then,” Dean tells him. “We weren’t friends—not yet—and for a long time it hardly felt like we were allies. Like we weren’t even really on the same side. I mean, I know we were, but—Man, you were a dick. Claire knows what I’m talking about.”

Claire actually laughs from the pews, and Cas frowns, which just makes Dean grin, because _yes_ , success, joke landed.

“Looking back,” Dean continues, “the things I hated about you then are the things I like about you now.” The cards shake in his hands as he flips to the next one. Crap, this is when it starts to get embarrassing. He’s never put this into words before, never told anyone _why_ Cas. He’s afraid it won’t be _right_.

“Like how you never give up,” he says. “Not on anything, you know? Not on, on—you know, humanity or whatever we gotta do to help. Or me,” he adds, “even when maybe you should have. But you can make the hard choices and you don’t give up. I, uh, admire that about you. Your conviction. That… I admire that about you.”

He flips to the next card, too aware of the silence in the room, of the heat in his face and the shaking of his hands. This next part is hard. It’s hard to admit. He’s hidden these feelings for so long and now everybody—everybody will know.

Cas reaches out and touches his hand, lightly, and Dean looks up from the cards. Cas smiles and just keeps his hand there. Keeping him steady. Cas always keeps him steady.

“My longest relationship before you lasted a year,” he says, holding Cas’s gaze. “And that was only because of… well, shit that went down. I always left before things could go on too long, for a lot of reasons. For things I told myself were good reasons. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I didn’t want them to get hurt by something else because of me, I had a job to do and that came first. What it really was—the real reason I always left—was because I was afraid of what I wanted. I… I didn’t think I _deserved_ what I wanted. I—”

Cas squeezes his hand, and Dean looks back down at his cards, sucking in a breath. Back to the notes. Keep it together, Winchester.

“You make me feel like it’s okay. To want what I want. To… You make me feel okay.” He looks up again, biting his lip. “’Cause I’m not okay without you, Cas. I know we both have done our share of leaving. You’d disappear on me all the time, and then I was all domestic with Lisa, and then you got your ass stuck in Purgatory,” here, Cas winces, but Dean powers through, “and then I kicked you out of the bunker, which—still sorry about that, didn’t want to—and last year I went AWOL for a few months—”

Cas inhales and looks ready to interrupt, so Dean quickly moves on. “But we keep coming back. You know? It’s like we were circling each other for a while— _years_ , Jesus—and now we’re finally meeting in the middle, and I just—This is it for me. This is what I want. I’m not afraid of it anymore. After everything we’ve been through—what’s there to be afraid of? You’re still here. I’m still here. And you’re the best goddamn friend I’ve ever had.

“So all this,” he says, waving around the church with the cards, “today and everything, this is me saying I’m staying this time. I’m staying.” He pauses and takes a deep breath and says, “Will you stay with me?”

Cas’s eyes are shining and he’s still lightly touching Dean’s other hand, and Dean is holding his breath. Then, after a few silent seconds, he laughs.

“That, uh, wasn’t rhetorical,” he tells Cas. “You can interrupt me now.”

Cas’s face breaks into a grin. “Oh. Then, yes. Of course I’ll stay. Of course.”

Dean can’t stop his own grin. “Awesome. Okay.” He looks around for Sam, who steps up next to him with the pillow. Dean picks up the ring, and he’s not shaking anymore as he slips it onto Cas’s finger.

There. Married. It feels—He’s not sure. He’s not sure how to describe this feeling.

_Your life has not been easy, Dean Winchester. But I believe this feeling is what they call “happiness.”_

Yeah. Okay. He can live with that.

“Thank you,” Chuck says to Sam, and then he looks to Cas and Dean. “Okay? Okay,” he says at their nods, and he beams, standing up straighter. “Then here, under the eyes of your loved ones and in this house of the Lord, I bless you both. You may seal this union with a kiss.”

A—Oh, fuck. He forgot. Jesus, they haven’t even kissed in front of Sam. Well, except for the couple of times he’s walked in on them making out in the stacks in the bunker, but that’s his own damn fault. It’s never been on purpose before.

Cas meets his eyes, waiting, because all week he’s been letting Dean set the limits of their “displays of affection” in front of Dean’s parents. The first couple of days were weird, because Dean was avoiding really showing anything, which made him realize how much he and Cas touch. He wondered if that annoyed Sam at all. So he held back until Sam actually brought it up.

“Dude, it’s weirder that you’re _not_ being all couple-y,” he said one afternoon when they went for a drive to pick up snacks. “Get over it. Mom and Dad won’t care.”

So he’d tried light touches, starting with one breakfast when Cas was too sleepy to notice (definitely not a morning person, and God help you if you tried to engage him in conversation before his coffee). Just little things, like a hand on his back while he maneuvered around Cas to get the pancake mix, while Cas glared at the coffee maker like he was going to smite it for working too slowly. Resting his forehead on Cas’s shoulder to laugh when Sam caught a blueberry that Dean had thrown at him in his mouth. Placing a hand on his knee on the couch while Cas and Mom explained the flower arrangements to him. Every time, he felt them all watching, but he tried not to notice.

Maybe that’s the strategy he has to use now. Just ignore everyone else and focus on Cas. Sam always complains that they do it anyway, when they get in their intense staring contests.

So he focuses on Cas, who waits, because he’s always waiting, always giving Dean the space he needs to figure things out. Fuck, he doesn’t want to make Cas wait anymore. He just wants to give him everything.

So he leans in, and it’s chaste and short and nervous, just a peck really, and then he thinks, _Come on, Winchester, you can do better than that_ , and he yanks one of his hands out of Cas’s and grabs him by the tux jacket, pulling him closer, and kisses him for real.

Somewhere, in the recesses of his mind, he knows Charlie is wolf-whistling and the others are clapping and cheering and Chuck is whispering, “Congrats, you two,” but right now, he doesn’t care. He focuses on Cas’s grip on his hand, his ring cool and smooth pressing between his fingers, the pressure of Cas’s mouth on his. He breaks the kiss to get a breath, but he doesn’t pull away, resting their foreheads together instead and looking into Cas’s smiling eyes. He grins, and Cas grins back.

“Love you, Cas,” he whispers, because it’s loud in the church now with everyone clapping and whooping and he can get away with it, with admitting this one thing that he’d always been afraid of, and he kisses Cas once more before pulling him into a hug.

“I know,” Cas says into his ear, and Dean laughs, and he’s still laughing when he feels a hand clap on his shoulder and turns to see Sam smiling and he hugs him, too, and then everyone is gathered around them at the front of the church and yeah, happiness. That’s what they call this feeling.

 

* * *

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

It’s been a perfect day so far, which means, because this is Dean’s life, a demon _has_ to ruin it somehow.

When they drive up to the bunker, Crowley is standing at the edge of the wards, hands deep in the pockets of his black overcoat. When he sees their caravan of cars, the Impala at the lead, he takes his hands out and they’re empty, but Dean is probably going to shoot him anyway.

He stops the Impala at the curb and gets out to start toward Crowley, clenching his fists.

“Uh-uh, no,” he growls. “Get lost, Crowley, you were _not_ invited.”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Obviously,” he says, toeing the line, his polished shoe coming up against an invisible wall. “You certainly can’t invite your ex to your wedding. Would be inappropriate.”

“You are _not_ my ex,” Dean bites out, and Cas puts a hand on his shoulder, which he ignores. “You and me? We were never anything. Now beat it.”

“Who’s this?” asks John, and Dean turns to see that his parents and Sam have formed a semicircle with Dean and Cas around Crowley, while the others are standing next to their cars with Garth and Bobby are acting as back up.

“Ah, Daddy Winchester,” says Crowley, turning to John. “A pleasure. Never had the opportunity to stop by while you were doing time in Hell. How’s Heaven treating you?”

“Dean?” John grits out, ignoring Crowley, thank fuck.

“Crowley, King of Hell,” Crowley says anyway, and then, when John goes for the gun he’s apparently got at his back (like father, like son; Dean’s got a gun shoved in the back of his tux pants and knives strapped to his ankles, too), he _tsks_ and says, “You Winchesters are terribly suspicious. I’m not here to make a scene.”

Yeah, right. “So why are you here?” Dean demands.

Crowley shrugs. “Just to offer the newlyweds my congratulations,” he says. “May your days be long and happy and all that. And to give you this.” He reaches behind his back, and they all tense until he pulls a large black box, complete with a white ribbon, from out of nowhere. He holds it out in offering and waits, quirking an eyebrow. Cas’s hand tightens on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean glances back at him. Cas nods, so Dean steps forward, but he keeps Crowley at arm’s length as he takes the box. It’s heavier than he expected from the way Crowley handled it.

“What is it, bomb or toaster?” Dean says.

Crowley scoffs. “Please. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t use something as crude as a bomb.” He nods at Cas as he comes up to stand next to Dean. “The big one’s for Squirrel. Yours is on the sides.”

Dean narrows his eyes, and Crowley leers at him.

“Well, open it,” Crowley says after a while.

Dean snorts, because hell no, it’s going straight into the incinerator, but then Cas takes out a knife—Dean’s been a bad influence on him for sure, where was he keeping that?—and cuts the ribbon. It flutters to the ground, and Cas ignores it in favor of lifting the lid of the black box. In spite of himself, Dean looks down into the box and stares at its contents.

“You…” he starts, and then looks incredulously at Crowley, “got me a karaoke machine?”

Crowley smirks, and Cas reaches into the box, pushing aside what looks like instructions to the compact karaoke machine and a damn song book, to get at one of the golden metal plates that line the box. He’s got one halfway out of the box, revealing some foreign script that looks like Enochian etched into the gold, before he lets the plates fall back into the box and narrows his eyes.

“Where did you find these?” Cas demands, a little darkly.

Crowley shrugs. “Here and there. Only the best for my favorite hunter and angel duo,” he adds, preening a little.

“What are they?” Dean asks.

“Long lost texts,” Crowley answers before Cas can, because clearly he loves to butt in where he’s not wanted. “There’s a card from Mother in there, too, but I wouldn’t open it, if I were you. She’s still a bit sore about being chained up in a basement.”

“Great,” says Dean. “Anything else in here that’s cursed that I should know about?”

“No. Well…” Crowley thinks for a moment and then shakes his head. “No.”

“Dean,” John says, his voice low and impatient, “why is a demon giving you a karaoke machine?”

To John’s very obvious shock, Sam actually snorts out an aborted laugh. Dean rolls his eyes. Sam’s an asshole.

“Your boy’s got quite the set of pipes on him,” says Crowley, and Dean shoots him a warning glare that he ignores.

“Why isn’t this black-eyed son of a bitch dead yet?” John demands.

“Excuse you,” says Crowley, flashing his red eyes briefly. “Son of a _witch_. And, well, the devil you know,” he adds, shrugging, and when John looks to Sam, Sam shrugs, too.

“Get out of here, Crowley,” Dean says, exasperated and irritated. If he wasn’t holding this damn box, he’d shoot Crowley.

“Fine,” says Crowley, adjusting his coat. “You boys enjoy married life. And let me know if you ever need anything. I do so covet your souls.”

Dean blinks and Crowley is gone, and everyone immediately relaxes. The others come forward, the semicircle breaking, and Charlie hops over to peer into the box.

“You do karaoke?” she says.

Dean growls and stomps back to the Impala with the box, but truth be told, he can’t really even feel angry with Crowley. Today has been too great to bother with anger—and hell, he got a karaoke machine out of it. Not that he’ll ever use it.

Definitely not.

 

* * *

 

Cas kisses him in front of everybody after his drunken rendition of _Hot Blooded_ and Dean’s too happy to care.


End file.
